


If You Knew What I Know

by LadySilver



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU, Amnesia, Canon Divergent AU, Dancing, Fake Dating Lite, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-16
Updated: 2014-08-16
Packaged: 2018-02-13 09:05:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2144958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySilver/pseuds/LadySilver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Isaac loses his memory in the Alpha attack, he loses all knowledge of werewolves, too. Danny happens to be the one with the answers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Knew What I Know

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PunkPinkPower](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PunkPinkPower/gifts).



> This is story is set after Braeden rescues Isaac from the Alpha pack, and goes slightly AU after, working from the premise that Isaac lost a lot more of his memory than just a few days.

That Danny happened to be in the hospital at the same time that Isaac was admitted was a coincidence.

Really. 

He had physicals to pass for the upcoming sports season, which included routine lab work, an ultrasound on his knee, and a CT scan because of a bad concussion he'd sustained that spring. A lot of time to kill in between tests eventually led to him wandering around the corridors. He'd spent a lot of time in this hospital the previous year when his grandmother was dying; though she was gone now, the beige walls and the scent of disinfectant still offered a familiarity that he found strangely comforting.

Junior year promised big changes: With Jackson gone, Danny was faced with having to make new friends—all by himself; there'd be new classes and ranked up expectations as everyone started the mad rush to get into college; and, with any luck, he could rescue himself from the dating disaster that had been his summer. He rubbed the spot on his inner elbow where his lab work had been done and pondered all the ways that a new school year offered a fresh start.

That he found Isaac's room was also a coincidence. The hospital was busy that morning and Danny found himself drawing on his footwork skills and goalie reflexes to avoid getting run into by more than one visitor who was lost in his or her own thoughts and more than one patient who didn't realize the reach of their wheelchairs, crutches, and IV stands. He sidestepped a kid racing his new truck across the width of the hallway, spun out of the way of a cleaning cart that the orderly had chosen that moment to push out of another room, twisted past a somber couple whispering to each other outside a closed door, and found himself in a side-corridor. The activity and noise here off the main artery were lessened, like this section was taboo and only the bravest dared to enter it. Unconsciously, his step became quieter as he explored his way down the hall.

Passing a room, he glanced inside. The door was open just enough for him to catch a glimpse of a familiar-looking mess of blond curls pressed to the pillow. The owner's face was turned away. Danny nosed the door open a few more inches, stuck his head in. Under the sheet sprawled a long, lanky form; his chest rose and fell in the deep, steady breaths of a person sound asleep. Monitors nearby measured his heart beat and respiration with beeping that resonated through the room. “Isaac?” he mouthed, unable to believe what he was seeing. What could Isaac be doing in the hospital? 

Up close the bandages were visible, even beneath the sheets. They wrapped around Isaac's arm and covered his chest. Wounds over his eye and high on one cheek were taped shut. Green and purple bruising darkened his skin everywhere else. He looked like he'd either been in a bar fight with a ninja or had spent the night being tossed against the rocks by the undertow. An IV line was taped to the back of his hand. Whatever had happened to him, it had been bad. Like, really bad. People didn't get hurt this way just hanging out at the mall, and Isaac...

Danny sat down and next to him and carefully took the untubed hand, seeking some reassurance in the warmth he found there. The fingers were long, graceful. Danny wrapped them in his, trying to offer back what comfort he could. “What happened to you?” he asked, his voice low yet loud in the stillness of the room. “You're supposed to be safe now. Well, safer anyway.”

The sarcastic comeback Danny hoped to hear was absent; Isaac continued to sleep, his face slack and lips slightly parted. Meanwhile, Danny's mind churned with worry. He wanted to track down a doctor and find out Isaac's prognosis, and he wanted Isaac to wake up and justify how he'd allowed himself to get so injured, and he wanted to know why he couldn't see any sign of improvement. There had to be a sign by now, right?

He didn't realize he was working through all of this out loud until Isaac's hand twitched and his eyes blinked opened.

“Danny? What're you doin'?” Isaac asked. His voice was rough, cadence slow. “Where am I?”

“You're in the Beacon Hills Hospital,” Danny answered. “You were in an accident.” He waited while Isaac rolled his head and took in the room and the monitors. Isaac's blue eyes were sunken behind dark bags and barely focused. He looked so fragile, so scared. The selfish part of Danny—the part people rarely saw—wanted to shake Isaac and tell him to stop it, stop it! “Get up,” he wanted to say, “This isn't you. Be you!” He bit his tongue to hold in the words because he'd seen fragile and scared Isaac many times before in scattered, unguarded moments after a game ran long or test papers were returned. And he knew that the only way to help was to be patient. Not that he saw that as a burden.

“What kind of accident? Lacrosse? I don't want to miss the finals.” Isaac struggled for a moment to sit up, then collapsed back onto the bed when the pain proved to be too much.

Danny shook his head. “No.” He didn't elaborate, only because he couldn't. “Don't you remember? You look like you got pretty beat up.” Realizing that that was probably the wrong thing to say, he quickly added, “The doctors here are great, though. It looks like they're already taking good care of you.” His knee gave a sympathetic twinge, bringing back the memory of his own hospital stay in the 8th grade after he'd snagged his foot on a hurdle during track and dislocated it and torn a tendon. He remembered the doctor then being very careful to explain everything she was doing to fix him and offering advice on what to do with his time since he couldn't run.

Isaac's experiences with the hospital must have been very different because he looked suddenly worried. Gnawing his lower lip, he struggled to frame his next question. “Was it—Was it my dad?” His gaze cut away as if he'd just confessed to a dark secret.

 _What?_ His father was dead and had been for months. Ripped apart by some animal on a rainy night. Though, from what had since come public about what Mr. Lahey had done to his son, Danny couldn't help harboring the opinion that the death might have been too merciful. Unless Mr. Lahey had come back from the dead, no way had he inflicted Isaac's current wounds.

The sigh of relief brushed across Danny's cheek. “Good.” Isaac's head dropped back against the pillow: pallid skin against white, all the vibrancy and attitude missing from the person who had come to life that day in the spring, and whom Danny had been unable to stop thinking about since. Isaac wasn't done with his questions, though. His mouth worked, tongue darting out to moisten his lips. From somewhere far away he finally managed to ask, “Is he here?”

With those three words, Danny understood that the boy in front of him had suffered far more harm than a few bruises and scrapes, and Danny had stumbled into territory that he had no idea how to navigate. Opting for simplicity, he said again, “No.”

“Good,” Isaac repeated, his voice beginning to fade now. “I don't want him to see me this way.”

Certainly, Mr. Lahey had seen his son in the hospital, badly hurt, more than once. Why would Isaac want to protect his father from viewing it again? Danny opened his mouth to ask, but the chance was already passed. In the space between one breath and the next, Isaac had fallen back to sleep.

Danny continued to sit at his side for awhile, holding his hand. None of this made sense. Isaac was supposed to be getting a fresh start with the new year, but not like this. This wasn't the strong or confident guy he'd turned into, the one Danny had been silently crushing on since Isaac had crushed heads in the state finals.

“Excuse me, young man,” a new voice interrupted.

Danny turned to see a nurse in the doorway. She was an older white woman with heavy wrinkles, steel gray hair, and a thick body. A chart tucked into the crook of her arm indicated that she'd been coming in to check on Isaac. For an instant Danny felt himself preparing to leap at her and tackle her out of the way so that she wouldn't see anything she wasn't supposed to see. A glance back at Isaac and the bruises that had only deepened in the last few minutes quelled the urge.

“I'm afraid that only family is allowed to visit this patient,” she informed him, not unkindly.

Standing up, Danny tucked Isaac's hand back under the sheet, making sure to smooth the fabric over it. “He doesn't have any,” he said. “At least, I don't think he does.” Mr. Lahey was dead, and so was Isaac's brother Camden. One had been recent news and the other was memorialized in a plaque on the wall that the school dedicated for its alumni who died during military service. More than once, he'd caught Issac sneaking back into the school after practice to visit that plaque. Danny didn't know what had happened to Mrs. Lahey or whether there were, or had been, any other siblings.

If she was surprised by the news, she didn't show it. “Are you a friend?” the nurse pressed, moving into the room as if to haul _him_ out before he saw anything untoward.

There was no coincidence in his choice of words; he'd been practicing saying them for awhile, though he hadn't yet made any effort to turn them into reality. “I'm his boyfriend.” The nurse's expression softened, her cheeks crinkling even deeper from the fondness that older people often showed for young love.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “Hospital rules.”

Danny stood up, straightened his shorts and t-shirt. He couldn't argue with the nurse for enforcing the rules, and a part of him was relieved that Beacon Hills Hospital still cared about those details considering what all they had to deal with here. But he wasn't ready to go, yet. Flashing his best, most disarming smile—the one with the etched dimples and easy eye contact—he softened her up some more. “Could you tell me....Do you know what happened to him?”

She fell for it the way adults always did. Too bad hot guys weren't such easy prey. “No one knows. We've been waiting for him to wake up to ask him.” Tucking the chart under her arm where it couldn't be misplaced, she began ushering Danny out of the room. At the doorway she stopped. “Did he say anything to you?”

“Not much. I don't think he remembers anything.”

“About the accident?”

“At all,” Danny stated.

* * *

Despite the nurse's reminder of hospital visiting policy for minors, Danny had no intention of staying away. Isaac had no one. For the first time in his life, Danny understood what it felt like to not have any friends, and he couldn't stomach the thought of Isaac alone in the hospital room, wondering why no one was visiting him.

And visiting him as a friend couldn't even be that easy, because now Danny had to pretend to be his boyfriend. If Damon, his ex and by far his longest term relationship, could be believed, Danny's abilities to be a good boyfriend were limited. 

He stopped by the florist's the first thing the next morning to pick out some flowers. It was supposed to be a quick purchase—grab some flowers, in an out. Not until he was standing in front of the bouquets did he realize how many, and how complicated, the symbols of a relationship status were. How long had he had Isaac been “dating”, he wondered? Were they even at flowers, or was he better off going with candy or flowers? Maybe a teddy bear with a lacrosse shirt? If they were at flowers, were they still at carnations or was it safe to go to roses? An agonizing half hour later he settled on a mix of summer flowers.

By the time Danny got to the hospital, visiting hours were in full swing. Clutching the flowers, he hesitated just inside the big glass doors at the entrance and came very close to turning around and walking right back out. His hands wouldn't stop sweating and he couldn't shake the feeling that all the nurses and orderlies bustling around were watching him extra carefully. _It was a lie of convenience,_ he reminded himself.

 _“You don't owe him anything,”_ a part of him silently argued back. For some reason his mental voice was speaking in Jackson's voice. _“He's never done anything for you.”_

 _“Shut up,”_ he ordered. He'd never understood Jackson's obsession with not owing people, or with making sure that everyone owed him.

It figured that even an imaginary Jackson wasn't interested in taking orders. _“What could possibly be in it for you? Is there something you're not telling me, Danny boy?”_

He shuffled his feet and felt the breeze of the door opening and closing behind him, heard an irritated throat clearing of someone signaling him to get out of the way. “I want him to like me,” he confessed to himself. But that's not what this would this about! Being Isaac's friend was unrelated to any potential for more. Mercifully, Jackson kept his opinions on the subject silent.

Once moving, his feet found their own way to Isaac's floor. Any chance of stopping them was now out of his powers. He checked for the nurse from the previous day and saw her heading into someone else's room. She made eye contact with him, saw the flowers, and winked. Danny saw his one barrier disappear as she disappeared into the room without a comment. Emboldened, he started down the hallway once again. The door was in sight, propped open, Isaac's covered legs visible from Danny's angle. And then a hand closed around his upper arm and Danny found himself being yanked into a different room.

The door closed with a click, taking with it all the hallway noise. The in-room curtains were pulled, casting the room in an artificial dusk.

“You're Danny, right?” a different woman said. Her dark-blue scrubs identified her as another one of the nurses. Middle-aged, black curly hair, brown eyes. Her name tag provided only her first name: Melissa. Something about her features looked familiar, though Danny figured it was just that Beacon Hills was a small town and he'd undoubtedly seen her around before.

“Yeah,” he confirmed.

“And you're Isaac's...boyfriend?” She stumbled on the word, her head tilting slightly as if she suspected that she was the one in the wrong.

It was so hard to lie when the lie was one he wanted to have be the truth. Since it worked well at school, he settled on ambiguity. “Something like that.”

Melissa hesitated a second, then tumbled her whole request out at once. “We need your help.”

That was not the request he'd expected to hear. Immediately, his mind started to churn with all the possible reasons she could be asking _that of him._ Was Issac being a difficult patient? Did they need Danny to break the news of Mr. Lahey's death?

Did they _know?_

“Um, OK,” he responded. He studied her face carefully, searching for any signs of what she was hinting at.

Melissa pressed the flats of her hands together. “Isaac won't talk to anyone. He won't even talk to Scott.” She dropped the name like he would naturally know who she was talking about. Since the only Scott he knew made perfect sense when plugged into the scenario, he assumed that's who she meant. And then it clicked and he realized that she had to be Scott's mother. “He said he'll only talk to you,” she continued. “Which is a problem because Isaac...isn't exactly...” She trailed off, at loss for the right word.

“Typical?” Danny supplied, carefully.

“Yes! Typical.”

Despite the plastic vase they were in, the flowers looked like they were starting to wilt from the heat of his hands, and if he didn't get in to see Isaac soon, he really was going to lose his nerve and go home. Suddenly, Danny was tired of this dance he and Melissa were doing, each trying to determine what it was safe to say in front of the other person.

“And, what?” he asked. “You need me to talk to him and tell him he's a werewolf?” No sooner were the words said than he clamped his lips shut and furiously began to practice the kind of laugh he thought he'd need to fake to convince Melissa that he'd just been joking. He seemed to be doing a lot of faking these days.

Instead, Melissa's arms swept down in cleansing gesture and she gusted out a huge sigh. “Yes, exactly. I can't tell you how glad I am that you know. Scott said you didn't, but with as close as you are to...so many people, I wondered.”

He wondered whom exactly she was talking about. Scott, obviously. And Isaac. Stiles? Jackson?Perhaps they should go get a cup of coffee and trade notes, since it was clear that she knew at least as much about the goings on in Beacon Hills as he did. With a slight shake, he refocused himself. “Sure,” he agreed.

Her relief was palpable.

“How's he doing?” Danny asked. “Is he awake? Has he remembered anything?”

“He's awake,” she confirmed. “If he were human, I'd say he was doing well, considering everything that happened to him. He's not, though. He's not healing. He's not responding to medical treatment. If I had to guess, I'd say he's forgotten that he can, which is preventing his body from responding to the injuries the way it's supposed to.”

The news was exactly what Danny had feared. He confirmed a few details, reassured Melissa that he'd try to convince Isaac to let Scott talk to him, and turned to continue the walk down the short hospital hallway that it felt like he'd begun years ago.

Isaac was sitting up in the bed in his room, the TV on with the volume turned way down. 

“What are you doing here?” Isaac asked on seeing him. He was poking at a bowl of red Jell-O cubes as if he wasn't sure that the wriggly squares were really dead. His blond curls had that peculiar combination of flattened and mussed from being slept on and then not properly combed afterward; stubble rimmed his chin. Dishevelment and bruises aside, he looked much more alert than the previous day. So, at least that was something.

Danny hefted the flowers in his hand in silent explanation. 

Isaac brightened. “Thanks, man,” he said, actually sounding grateful at such a small gesture. When Danny moved to set them on the ledge in the room just for that purpose, he understood why: his flowers were the only ones.

With the flowers gone, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his shorts and stood awkwardly at the foot of Isaac's bed. All his usual suave and confidence had vanished, as it always seemed to do when he had to speak directly to Isaac. And now what was he supposed to do? Give him a hug? A kiss? A real boyfriend would do both. But he wasn't a real boyfriend, was he?

“So, I, um, wanted to check in and see how you're doing,” Danny offered.

“I got attacked by some kind of wild animal, lost about four months worth of memory, and found out I'm an orphan. How do you think I'm doing?”

Sensing that this might be his one opportunity to say what he needed to say, Danny shot back, “So I guess now isn't the time to tell you that you're also a werewolf.”

“Screw you,” Isaac said, clearly not amused.

Not that Danny could blame him. From Isaac's perspective, Danny was mocking him, and that wasn't what a friend, “boyfriend,” or boyfriend should do. “I'm actually serious about that. It seems to be the going thing in Beacon Hills these days.” That part was a guess, because he really had no idea how many werewolves were running around.

“Are you trying to be funny? 'Cause you're not.” Isaac's eyes narrowed into an angry squint, his whole body drawing tight in defense of whatever verbal attack he thought was coming next.

“Hey, I'm just the messenger.” Danny offered a conciliatory smile and held his hands out in a peace-making gesture. “I'm sorry about the timing. I just didn't want to risk getting kicked out of here again before you knew.”

“Whatever.” Isaac stabbed his spork into the Jell-O again. 

They both watched the handle bob back and forth. The metal handle glinted under the fluorescent lighting like some kind of modernist metronome. When it started to slow down, Isaac tapped the end.

Danny allowed himself a short laugh. “Dude, I know it's hard to believe. Believe me, I know. I can't tell you how many conversations I had to overhear before I realized that you guys weren't talking about a new computer game or something.”

Isaac's glower deepened over the spork's slow shredding of the Jell-O squares. A few more seconds down this road and he'd be the one telling Danny to get out. Only Danny wasn't going anywhere until Isaac understood, and since this news, at least, wasn't a lie, nothing in his body language could undermine him. “Wait! I get it. This is, like, that thing where you use one word instead of another one, right? Like a code.”

“What?” Danny racked a hand through his hair, trying to figure out what Isaac was accusing him of.

As if understanding that he was now in control of the conversation, Isaac's defensiveness fell away. He straightened up in the bed, uncurling his shoulders and crossing his arms.“I know you're not my boyfriend.”

Danny sighed. Well, so much for that ruse, and so much for any small amount of trust Danny had managed to build between himself and Isaac.

“We barely know each other,” Isaac continued.

Boyfriends there were not. But, strangers? Danny scoffed. “We've been teammates for years. And classmates. We're practically neighbors. You lived across the street from Jackson for half your life and you know how much time I spent at his house.”

Isaac made a face. “When was the last time you voluntarily said anything to me before yesterday?”

OK, so Danny couldn't come up with an answer off the top of his head. Mostly at school he didn't say much of anything to anyone. He did a lot of listening and a lot of thinking—and more than a little silent pining and trying not to be pathetic in public. “You realize that I could make up an answer and you'd have no way to know if I'm telling the truth. Four months is a long time.” He'd had whole relationships live and die in the span of four months. Take Damon, for example. Their whole relationship had been born and gone nova in barely three months. Meanwhile, he and Isaac had been playing on the same lacrosse team for two years, which included an untold number of team bonding exercises, after win celebrations, and after loss commiserations.

“You wouldn't do that. You're not that kind of guy.”

The unintentional compliment made Danny suddenly aware that he was standing in the bright square of sunlight streaming in the room's window; the blush that spread over his body heated his already warmed skin to the point of discomfort. “I thought you said that you barely knew me?” Danny replied. If he just kept talking, maybe Isaac wouldn't realize how easy it would be to take his comment as flirting.

Isaac dropped his gaze back to the spork. He studied its last feeble twitches, his blue eyes staying averted from Danny's for way too long. “I'd still know,” Isaac insisted softly. One last flick of the spork, and he set the Jell-O on the tray table off to the side. The movement made him wince.

“Because I'm unforgettable?” Danny quipped.

Isaac's voice was barely audible over the TV when he answered, “Because I'm straight.”

Under his arms, where Isaac couldn't see them, Danny clenched his fists, capturing and holding in the visceral reaction he wanted to have. For Isaac to have lost so much of himself was...horrifying. “OK,” he said, trying to keep his tone neutral. “You're right. We're not dating.” That part, at least, was true. No matter how much Danny wished otherwise. “Considering the circumstances, it seemed like a useful lie.”

“Right, because I'm a werewolf. You're a werewolf. We're all werewolves here. You know, you really need to work on your pickup technique.”

The last part, Danny did know. All too well. “Fine, don't believe me.” He forced his hands to relax, forced his whole body to relax. “Also, I'm not a werewolf. Just you. Well, you and a few other people. Who you really need to talk to because I kinda get the feeling that the reason you're in the hospital is related.”

Isaac mulled this over. His lips pursed and straightened, fingers tapped against the mattress. Next to his head, the IV delivered useless medication into his body one slow drip at a time. How long until someone who wasn't Melissa noticed and started investigating further? Getting Isaac to understand what he was was necessary for keeping him safe, and ultimately that's all Danny had wanted to do when he'd stepped into his teammate's room the previous day: keep him safe. “One question,” Isaac said at last.

“OK?”

“If you could go out with me, would you?”

That...was not the question Danny was expecting. He blinked hard, swallowed harder. Danny could tell him the truth, confess to how much he'd wanted to ask Isaac out and how hard it had been to not openly crush on him while he waited for Isaac to figure out who he was. _“Like that's going to end well,”_ Jackson's voice taunted him. For once, his former best friend had a point. Danny sputtered for a second, trying to get his brain and his tongue to agree on a response, before he finally heard himself say, “No, of course not.”

Isaac tipped his head like he was listening hard. All Danny could hear was the beeping and buzzing of the various machines in the room and the more muffled noises of activity in the hall. “I'm tired,” Isaac stated, those two words cutting off any further conversation or negotiation. “I really need to be getting some rest. You should leave now.”

 _“Screwed that one up, didn't you?”_ Jackson asked. 

“Yes. I think so, too,” Danny replied, though to which statement he didn't now. He gave a last look at the flowers, the only patch of bright color in the beige-on-beige room and hoped that Isaac would understand them for what they were.

On his way out, Danny stopped at the nurse's station. Melissa was bent over a thick folder, making notes on one page. She looked up with a start when Danny tapped the counter.

“How did it go?” she asked. “Did you tell him?”

“Uh-huh.”

Her eyebrows went up in silent encouragement for him to elaborate. 

“Somehow, I don't think he believed me.”

Melissa looked down the hall toward Isaac's room and tapped the pen in her hand against her lips. No one should have to deal with the burdens Isaac already carried, and here they were trying to convince him of the impossible. “Can you blame him?”

No, Danny really couldn't. On any count.

* * *

Danny hadn't been to the Jungle in weeks—not since the attack that left him and so many of the other club-goers, including Damon, in the hospital. While he hadn't been specifically avoiding the place, somehow he always found an excuse to stay away.

That night, he felt a need to reach out to his old haunts as if to confirm that the world was still playing by the rules he knew. A couple hours checking in with the various forums he frequented, a handful of texts to Jackson that might get answered when daytime arrived in London, a quick run through some practice drills in his backyard, and then he got in the car and drove to the club.

It was packed, as it always was. Danny threaded his way through the crowd, checking out the other guys as he passed. Underneath the strobing lights and thick fog, every guy looked gorgeous as they writhed on the dance floor. And not one of them were whom he was looking for.

He found a seat at the bar instead and settled back to watch. He knew most of the guys from crossing paths with them here, though he'd only been on dates with a few. There, in the center of the floor, was the one he'd been hoping not to see: Damon, with his smug smirk and gauged ears, shirtless and sweaty. Danny took a long pull of his Coke—it really was just a Coke tonight—and tried to focus on the liquid chilling his teeth rather than the heat on the dance floor. As if realizing he was being watched, Damon dragged his attention from his partner and found Danny's eyes through the haze of the fake fog and the crush of bodies between them. _This could have been you,_ his expression seemed to say; he licked his lips and ground his body closer to the tall, muscular brunet who'd won tonight's dance lottery. _See what you're missing?_

Danny did see what he was missing, and at times like these he couldn't imagine that he'd ever find anyone else. Though Damon had had a jealous streak, he and Danny had always managed to have fun together: dancing, playing pickup basketball, debating the latest developments in internet technology. And the sex. If Damon had had a stamp collection he obsessed over and no other discernible interests, the sex would have convinced Danny to give philately serious consideration.

He sighed and went for another long pull of his drink. The last few drops of liquid stuttered up through the straw and Danny frowned at the betrayal of his glass for refusing to stay full. If his night was going to keep going like this, he might as well pack it in.

An arm sliding around his shoulder startled him. The glass slipped from his fingers, and was caught well before it hit the floor by someone with amazing reflexes. Danny recognized the long fingers wrapped around the glass and was already smiling by the time he met Isaac's eyes.

Isaac had traded in his hospital gown for a pair of form-fitting black jeans and a dress shirt with the top button popped open. All trace of injury or illness was gone, though his cheeks were flushed with the warmth of the club. His blue eyes held a familiar glint of mischievousness. “So, I was watching this really crappy game show,” he began. Setting the empty glass on the bar, he signaled the bartender for a refill and a second.

Danny nodded, encouraging Isaac to continue his pick-up line even while he tried to wrap his head around what was going on here. Isaac at the Jungle? Isaac touching Danny like they were old friends? He glanced at the fingers curling over his shoulder and then up to where Damon had given up on pretending to dance with his Danny-substitute in exchange for open-mouthed staring.

“And I sort of remembered that you liked to hang out here,” Isaac continued. Rather than shouting over the pounding music, he leaned closer to Danny. The clean scent of his shampoo and soap smelled new, and for a second Danny entertained the thought of Isaac, naked, in the shower. 

The fantasy came to an abrupt halt when he realized what Isaac had said. “You remembered?” he asked, shouting back.

Isaac nodded, the corner of his mouth quirking. “Yeah. It all came back at once.”

“Like, _everything?”_

Again, Isaac nodded. “Yeah.”

Apparently getting his memory back was all it took for his body to heal. It was funny how powerfully expectations could shape one's reality. Danny blinked slowly and again looked at the hand that was cupping his shoulder. Those fingers were really long. They looked like artists' hands, like hands that knew how to draw beauty from whatever they touched.

 

“So, what happened to being straight?”

The hand slipped away, and for a horrible moment Danny thought he'd said exactly the wrong thing. How many times had Damon accused him of not knowing when to leave well enough alone? For some reason, the keep yourself to yourself skills he practiced in school never seemed to carry over into his private life, no matter how often his relationships foundered.

Isaac's shoulders tightened and he stared sightlessly at the guys bouncing and grinding around him. Electronica filled every crevasse of the space, thrumming through Danny and dragging his heart along after it. When Isaac finally spoke again, the question was buried the noise. Only because Danny was watching so closely did he catch the movement of Isaac's lips.

“What?” Danny shouted back.

Isaac closed up, started to turn away. Whatever he'd said, he wasn't going to repeat. It astounded Danny how strong Isaac's confidence could be one second and how insecure he was another. Danny supposed it made sense, given his history. Still, the unpredictability was a challenge.

“Wait!” Danny lurched off the bar-stool and grabbed Isaac's arms. “I didn't hear you. That's all.”

Another long moment passed with them frozen in stillness while the music urged them to _move_ before Isaac again ventured his question. Head bowed, he asked, “Wanna dance?”

This time, Danny heard and saw both the words. “Yes!” he shouted in response. “Yes!”

Isaac's offered a tentative smile in response that quickly spread across his face, crinkling the corners of his mouth and eyes. “Lots of things changed over the last coupla' months.”

Danny nodded, trying to imagine what it had been like for Isaac to discover his real memories, and to get to see them as both the experiencer and the onlooker. Perhaps they could go back to Danny's house after this and Isaac would tell him. Or, not—if that's what he wanted.

“I learned a lot about myself as a person,” Isaac continued. He had keep his sentences short and space his words in the quieter beats of the song. Even so, Danny only hoped he was hearing everything correctly. “And, ya know, other things.” Yellow passed over his eyes, lingering long enough for only Danny to catch it: A shared secret between them.

“You're OK with what I did?”

“I get it,” Isaac replied. “You did what you had to.” Nuance was lost when one had to shout, so Danny had to trust that Isaac's presence here meant that he forgave him.

They carved out a spot on the floor and tentatively began to explore how to move together. The beat pulled them close. Danny's hands found Isaac's hips, his thumbs settling in over the cloth covered jut of bone. If Damon was watching, he didn't know. And didn't care.


End file.
